Combatting Password Fatigue with Social Login

Caution: As a website owner, it is important
for you to know about a growing epidemic
on the World Wide Web that could be
affecting your visitors’ engagement with your
website.

The Diagnosis: The recent outbreak is
festering among frequent Internet users, and
has been diagnosed as Password Fatigue — a
feeling that is experienced by Web users who
are required to remember an excessive number
of passwords as part of their daily routines.
The Symptoms: While this epidemic
might not sound serious, the symptoms
could prove to be business-threatening.
Warning signs include high site abandonment
rates, low engagement metrics and
even an increase in inconsistent purchasing
actions.

The Cure: Thankfully, the remedy for
password fatigue is easy to administer. The
solution is called social login, and thanks to
a handful of providers, it can be easily integrated
into a website to provide site visitors
with the option to login through existing
profiles from sites such as Facebook, Google
or Yahoo.

Not only does social login benefit the
consumer who no longer has to remember
multiple passwords, but it also benefits website
owners because minimizing login barriers
leads to higher site engagement rates, an
increase in conversions, as well as more accurate
consumer data that is derived from social
profiles.

Janrain is one vendor that offers social
login within its Engage platform. The basic
package, which is optimal for bloggers and
hobbyists, is free — while the plus, pro and
enterprise packages range from $10 a
month to more than $1,000 a year, depending
on the size of business and website it is
being used for. The Janrain Engage platform
also offers social sharing options, valuable
user profile data and demographics, mobile
support and social analytics.

And implementing social login to your
site could be critical because research reveals
that 86 percent of Web visitors have left a site
when prompted to register, and 88 percent
admit to inputting false information on website
registration forms, according to Janrain
VP of marketing Bill Piwonka.

“Seventy-seven percent of consumers recently
reported preferring to have an option
to use an existing ID, such as a Google, Twitter
or Facebook account,” says Piwonka. “By
offering a simple one-click registration using
a social identity, our clients not only get clean,
accurate information, but also increase conversion
rates by as much as 30 percent.”

Janrain isn’t the only company engaging
in the fight against Password Fatigue. Social
media tool provider Gigya also presents a social
login solution within its Social Identity
Management platform, which includes a
cloud-hosted database for storing consumer
social identity data, user interaction forms for
maximizing registrations, single sign-on, and
can integrate user data into marketing tools
— such as email campaigns and advertising
networks.

Gigya also offers a suite of social tools including
website plugins for comments, sharing,
activity feeds, live chat, ratings and
reviews. These plugins allow site visitors to interact
with and share content while using their
social identities, which can result in valuable
referral traffic.

With social sign on, Gigya has seen its
clients’ site registration rates increase by up to
40 percent. In addition, visitors that sign on
with social login prove to be five times more
likely to make a purchase and, on average,
spend 10 percent more on purchases than
non-social users.

Social login also provides businesses with
valuable and important consumer data, according
to Gigya senior marketing manager
Victor White.

“By gaining permission-based access to
users’ social profile information, businesses
can market to their users like never before,”
says White. “Imagine being able to send tailored
emails, via email marketing platforms,
to users based on traits like the universities
they attended or the musical artists they like.
Social data can also be put to use by feeding it
directly into content/product recommendation
engines like Baynote or Certona.

“Ultimately,” he adds, “what social data
gives businesses is a level of user-insight that
has never before been possible. And all this
data can be accessed via social login.”

Prognosis: Combating Password Fatigue
by including social login on your website can
prove to be a smart move that won’t only
benefit your site’s visitors, but also your bottom
line. It provides your website with a
faster and more seamless way for visitors to
login, can result in higher engagement and
conversion metrics, and provides businesses
with detailed and valuable consumer information
and insights.